


Abelas

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:05:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Orsino / Marethari - questioning beliefs</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abelas

In his dreams, Orsino heard singing.

He couldn’t grasp the words, or even remember more than the barest snatches of melody after awakening. But in his most vivid dreams, the one thing that stood out the most was the singing.

He’d wake up with the drying tracks of tears on his cheeks, and wonder.

Clouds hung low and heavy on the day the Dalish Keeper came to Kirkwall, apparently at the behest of a woman in the Alienage. Orsino trotted down the steps and into the Gallows’ plaza, and for the briefest of moments, he thought he heard song. The tips of his ears twitched, breath catching in his throat — but the moment had long passed.

The curious looks of passersby followed him as he strode purposefully from the courtyard.

—

The Keeper was just emerging from one of the shabby homes when Orsino descended the last few steps into the Alienage. He felt the undercurrent of power immediately, faint and laborious under the weight of stone and despair, but there nevertheless. Distracted, he followed its thrum, fingers questing upward and finding the rough bark of the vhenadahl, the large twisting tree in the Alienage’s centre.

“First Enchanter Orsino? What are you doing here?” He snatched his fingers away from the vhenadahl, clearing his throat.  
But he had no answer for the young elf, her head cocked with curiosity that bore an undercurrent of distrust. His mouth opened, breath ready to give life to words, but no words came.

His eyes flicked back towards the Keeper, grey hair pulled back into a loose and wispy bun, her hands light and gentle on the sagged shoulders of the woman she consoled. He pulled absently at the clasp at his collar, his chest and throat tight and just a little too warm.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he murmured, and the girl who’d questioned him stared after him blankly before shrugging and moving on.

The Keeper saw him approach and turned to greet him, eyes shrewd and penetrating as she took in the whole of him. His steps faltered as he felt himself deconstructed for her perusal.

“Greetings, Keeper,” he began, sounding winded although he had not been running.

“Ataran atish’an,” she responded with an incline of her head, and the melody of the words made Orsino think he was hearing the song again. He tried snatching at it, but she was still speaking, and the feeling dissipated. “You are from the Circle, correct?”

“I… I am. My name is Orsino. I… wish to speak with you.” He licked his lips nervously, feeling the Alienage’s many eyes upon him, and implored her with his eyes. She inclined her head again, and they retreated to a less open corner of the district, the shadow of the vhenadahl falling upon them.

She waited, though curiosity surely burned within her. Or, perhaps not — she exuded patience the way some exuded power, or evil.  
Patience, and whatever it was that sought Orsino in dreams.

“I…” He cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and plunged onward. “I grew up in the Circle. I know little to nothing of… of what it truly is to be an elf, of the knowledge of the Dalish — as it is, I only have the most cursory knowledge of the Alienage and its history. I have always been… a mage first, an elf second.” Whilst he spoke, the gesturing of his hands, his secondary way of speaking, implored her to understand.

“But I have dreams… of a song. It’s in _elvhen_ , I believe, and I… believe it’s trying to tell me something, but I cannot decode the message. I… hoped you might help.”

“We have many songs, Orsino,” the Keeper responded, gently. “It would be difficult for me to know which song you heard.”

“Yes, yes, I know. I…” His hands fell back to his side, shoulders falling as he sighed. “I just—”

Her hand, feather-light on his arm, stilled his tongue. She was smiling, ever so faintly, and her eyes sought his, and for a moment he was calm. And then her fingers moved up to touch his temples, and her eyes closed.  
As did his.

And the stagnant odour of the Alienage was gone, and the weight on his shoulders was gone, and frustration and anxiety were a thing of the past. And the Keeper was singing, ever so softly but ever so keenly, and Orsino was... was _in_ this song, and every word was as clear as day to him, and he could see the melody, a golden ribbon that twined around him.

” _Melava inan enansal ir su araval tu elvaral u na emma abelas… In elgar sa vir mana in tu setheneran din emma na…_ ”

And though the exact meaning of the words were not known to him, Orsino felt their meaning and revelled in their exquisite sorrow, the soft, tremulous rise and fall of the Keeper’s voice, the fullness of his heart.

” _Lath sulevin lath araval ena arla ven tu vir mahvir… Melana ‘nehn enasal ir sa lethalin._ ”

There was no need for the Keeper to ask if she’d been correct in her choice of song. There was no need for Orsino to ask how she’d known. Tears still clung to his lashes when his eyes blinked open, and when awareness returned to him, when _reality_ returned to him, his heart was crushed.  
 _Soul-sickness,_ he’d heard it called, and suddenly he knew why defection from the Circle was highest amongst the sharp-eared acolytes.

“The words are within you now, Orsino,” the Keeper informed him with great certainty, that faint smile still lingering. “And you are wrong.  
No matter what else you are, you can be naught but _elvhen_ first, first and foremost.”

—

Dorian Hawke stared out at the storm grey waters, the late Orsino’s staff laid out across her lap and Anders curled in tight next to her, swaddled in coarse wool, softly snoring. Twilight didn’t exist over these waters, or over the Gallows she was leaving behind, or anywhere in Kirkwall. It was day, and then it was a murky dusk that brought faint, nameless dread and the feeling of heaviness before night obliterated everything.

Her eyes still ached, from lack of sleep and from the intermittent, rapid-fire flashes from mage staffs and from the lyrium glow of Meredith’s sword — and, at the end, Meredith herself.  
But when her hands ran absently over the staff across her thighs and found grooves in the wood, she looked down and squinted at it.

She had to bring the staff close to her face to make out the markings, but soon discovered they were words.  
“Lath sul… sulevin? Lath arave— no, araval ena…” she murmured to herself, pronouncing the foreign words with difficulty.  
Elvish, it sounded like.

Merrill, sitting with her knees drawn up a short distance away, suddenly looked up.

She sang the words softly, exactly as they were inscribed on the staff, and tears filled her great greenish eyes.

“And time will once again be the joy it once was,” she clarified, her voice breaking on the end phrase.

They were silent for the remainder of the journey.


End file.
